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I have recently started to try my hand at some photography again. It’s something that I’ve always been interested in, but never got around to pursuing. It’s funny how time just flies by sometimes. One day you’re in high school, with your whole life ahead of you, planning your next steps. Then before you know what’s hit you, years have passed and you didn’t get to do half of what you expected that you would. When you’re that young you think you have all this time, you know.
It was even before high school that I originally fell in love with photography. I used to take a camera around with me everywhere that I went. Like I didn’t want to live unless there was something there to record it. I think it was because I had the idea that I should remember everything. Nothing like a picture to help you do that. I still have a lot of the photos that I took around that time. Many of them were rough, of course, but not bad for my age.
Then I became a teenager, went to a new school, made a bunch of new friends, and did whatever it is that teenagers do. I still carried my trusty camera around with me but photography took a bit of a backseat to everything else. I don’t know why exactly. I still loved it. I guess that it just got lost between schoolwork, parties, and girls. Not that I was the class Casanova by any stretch but I did have a romance or two during those years. I did also take some pictures during that time, but nowhere near as many.
I always planned on getting back to taking photographs with the passion I had in my preteen years. I thought that I would start it up again as soon as I was done with the pressures of high school. That there would be all this time to pursue photography then. For a while, I even had the idea that I might try going freelance with it.
Life being what it is, there never was any more time. It seems like there’s always something else to keep me occupied. After high school there was college. Then after college there was looking for a job, then getting entrenched in it. Trying to make a good life for myself. But what does that mean exactly? I wasn’t doing what I had always enjoyed so much. By that time the only photography I was engaged in was the usual holiday and vacation snapshots that everyone has a drawer full of. Nice, but hardly fulfilling from a creative standpoint.
And now, I still don’t have the time. I feel like I am busier than ever. But I also feel like I can no longer afford to not make room in my life for a little bit of art. It’s good for the soul. So, here I am with a brand new camera in my hands. It’s been so long that I hardly know how to hold it anymore.
I’m a little too old for the bravado of youth nowadays. Not that I’m an old man just yet, you understand. I just have too much experience for that. I no longer think that I’m going to change the world with the pictures that I take. But adding just a bit of beauty to it is enough. And if I could share one important lesson with anyone who reads this post, it would be to follow your passions. Don’t wait as long as I did to get back to photography. Right now is always the best time to do what it is that fulfills you.